Rochester Teen Enters Guilty Plea in Gamestop Robbery Case
Rochester, MN (KROC-AM News) - A sentencing hearing has been scheduled in July from one of the two men arrested after an armed robbery and assault in February left an employee of a Rochester business in critical condition with a fractured skull from an attacker armed with a hammer.
19-year-old Ali Robida has entered into a plea agreement by admitting to a 1st-degree assault charge. Two other charges, 2nd-degree assault and 1st-degree aggravated robbery, were dropped.
Robida and 18-year-old Jacob Meier were charged after police used security camera video recordings to identify them as suspects in the robbery at the Gamestop store in northwest Rochester on February 19th.
Meier later gave a statement admitting he was the person who struck the 23-year-old Gamestop worker on the head with a hammer. Meier remains in the Olmsted County Jail on $100,000 bail and is scheduled to stand trial in late August.
According to the complaint, Meier told police Robida “owed a debt to a drug dealer and the robbery was an effort to obtain funds to pay that debt.” Police later learned Robida had sold 16 video games to a pawn store in Duluth two days after the robbery. They were apparently taken during the Rochester robbery.
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